(11-12-2025, 04:27 AM)Jorge_Stolfi Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.The answer to (2) is "not always" because the Zodiac bifolios were clearly not meant to be nested.
That is correct. A similar argument can be made for the three sheets with pharma illustrations, if one looks at the evolving shapes of the containers. This works best if they are consecutive, and not nested.
The presence of quire numbers on one out of every four sheets with herbal illustrations clearly means that these were meant
at that time to be nested in stacks of four. Even with alternating A and B sheets.
One more question, sorry: do you know or suspect when these pages were removed or lost?
I have a bit of a suspicion that a sample of each illustration type was removed by someone, perhaps in order to send to someone else to analyse, but there is no way to be certain about that.
It is also possible that some pages were in such a bad shape that they were removed during a rebinding. Also unprovable. This would not be the case for folios 12 and 74, which were clearly cut out.
(11-12-2025, 06:04 AM)Jorge_Stolfi Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. (10-12-2025, 10:29 PM)Cuagga Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. (10-12-2025, 10:08 PM)Jorge_Stolfi Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Another possibility is that the Painter noticed that the drawing of You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. extended into f40r, and thus opened the book on that page and painted those bits. It seems that the paint on You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. stops a hair before the gutter, and the paint on You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. does not quite match:
I struggle to imagine that painting while the manuscript is bound would yield such clean result ; colour right up to the margin, while not covering neither the opposite page f34r, nor the binding string visible on You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. (first flower from the top). It also seems to me that the bottom part of the middle flower shows paint right into the gutter
But on the top flower the paint seems to stop a pixel or two before the gutter (A):
Also the offsetting of the blue-black paint on You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. (B,C) seems to be vertically mismatched relative to paint on f33v. What do we make of that?
And could please someone explain what we see at (D,E)? Is that binding string running along the gutter?
All the best, --stolfi
The way I see it, A has been erased by the continuous rubbing, through centuries, with the folded folio inside ; D and E are pieces of string, I don't know if they are quire-binding string, the binding of the cover, or the reinforcements (probably E is quire string, as it seems thinner), and B and C are so close to their expected positions that I can still see them as paint transfers, while the book was bound and the paint supposed to be dry (some paints stay susceptible to transferring even years after being applied)
(10-12-2025, 10:08 PM)Jorge_Stolfi Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Another possibility is that the Painter noticed that the drawing of You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. extended into f40r, and thus opened the book on that page and painted those bits. It seems that the paint on You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. stops a hair before the gutter, and the paint on You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. does not quite match:
But note that both images are somewhat distorted right next to the gutter, because of the curvature of the vellum.
All the best, --stolfi
In the photograph, the seams interfere with proper perception. A visual examination of the original would undoubtedly resolve this issue.
(11-12-2025, 06:11 AM)ReneZ Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.The presence of quire numbers on one out of every four sheets with herbal illustrations clearly means that these were meant at that time to be nested in stacks of four. Even with alternating A and B sheets.
Could these quire numbers have been written just prior to the binding, to instruct the first Binder about the desired order of the quires in the book? Or even by the Binder himself?
If the bifolios had been kept unbound by the Author, with no folio numbers, why would he number the quires? he would not need them to keep the sections in whatever order he wanted, and on the other hand he did not seem to care about the order of the Herbal folios.
IIUC, the McCrone X-ray fluorescence instrument detected iron on both the text ink and the folio numbers, but no iron on the quire numbers. This suggests that (1) they were not written by the original Scribe and (2) are probably on lampblack ink or other ink that does not bind to the vellum. The (2) in turn makes sense if whoever wrote them did not care about their long-term permanence.
All the best, --stolfi
(11-12-2025, 10:21 AM)Hider Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.In the photograph, the seams interfere with proper perception. A visual examination of the original would undoubtedly resolve this issue.
[
attachment=12893]
It is possible that my alignment above (based on the narrow wavy petal) is incorrect. But apart from that, consider the main blue petal, about halfway the image height. I see
three distinct colors of paint: two separate patches on You are not allowed to view links.
Register or
Login to view. and a single broader one on f40r.
All the best, --stolfi
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I'm happy to clarify some of my own thinking in response to these questions.
The evidence suggests that each bifolium was written as an independent unit, meant to be read as four pages in a row. The illustrations that cross the gutter support this interpretation, as does the Latent Semantic Analytics that Colin Layfield has conducted (as explained in my lecture). The fact that the cosmological and zodiac sections (and even the rose, topographically) are intentional singulions adds more evidence.
As much as I would love to find a fifteenth-century analogue of a manuscript comprised of unbound stacked singulions, such assemblages are extremely unlikely to have survived. Manuscripts that aren't bound are fragile and at great risk of damage or loss. I think it likely that whomever nested and bound the manuscript (sometime in the fifteenth century, based on the style of the sewing) didn't know how to read it but wanted to preserve it, so they bound it as they would have any other manuscript, in quires of nested bifolia between wooden boards, with quire numbers to help the binder keep it in some kind of order. The herbal bifolia were bound in quires of four, as is typical. The other text-heavy sections (quires 13 and 20) were bound with all of the similar bifolia nested. The cosmological and zodiac sections were not nested, since the zodiac was clearly already in the right order. That leaves the Rose, bound as is, and quires 15, 17, and 19 - the herbal bifolia in this section are almost certainly out of place and, as Stolfi noted, the pharma bifolia are likely singulions as well.
As for bifolium 33|40, in this case you have both an illustration that crosses the gutter from 33v to 40r AND an offset of pigment from 33v to 34r. There's nothing contradictory about that, especially since the Gothic sewing suggests that the manuscript has been in its current mis-ordering for centuries.
It is worth noting that all of the missing leaves are bifolia from the center of a quire, except for 12 and 74 which are singletons that left stubs behind: 59|64, 60|63, 61|62, 91|92, 97|98, 109|110. Because they came from the center of their quires, they could easily be removed without disrupting the sewing. Note that 91|92 and 97|98 were singulions!
Thanks for the post! But, just to fix the credits:
(11-12-2025, 02:25 PM)LisaFaginDavis Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.as Stolfi noted, the pharma bifolia are likely singulions as well.
I said that of Zodiac. It was Rene who added Pharma.
All the best, --stolfi
Apologies! Thanks for the correction.
(11-12-2025, 03:37 PM)Jorge_Stolfi Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Thanks for the post! But, just to fix the credits: (11-12-2025, 02:25 PM)LisaFaginDavis Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.as Stolfi noted, the pharma bifolia are likely singulions as well.
I said that of Zodiac. It was Rene who added Pharma.
All the best, --stolfi